1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to a biochip and a method for manufacturing the same, and more particularly to a biochip used in various fields including analysis of gene expression and gene defects, analysis of protein distribution, disease diagnosis, new drug discovery, and the like, by using biochemical reactions between target materials and biomaterials.
2. Related Art
In manufacturing a substrate for a biochip, silicon or quartz glass has been generally used, and metal, inorganic material, or a polymer material also has been gradually used. A manufacturing process of a plastic chip, which is being recently researched, is slightly different from a manufacturing process of a glass chip or a PDMS chip. The manufacturing process of the plastic chip requires a mold, like the manufacturing process of the PDMNS chip. A mold of the plastic chip is formed of a hard material, such as Si, glass, metal, unlike an SU-8 mold. The mold of the plastic chip is formed through a photolithography process, an etching process, and the like. In addition, a hot embossing process, where the manufactured mold of the plastic chip is used to imprint patterns on a thermoplastic substrate, such as PMMA, is performed. The pattern-imprinted thermoplastic substrate and a plastic flat plate are bound to each other, thereby finally completing the plastic chip. The advantages of the hot embossing process are that the manufacturing method is simple and the manufacturing cost is reduced since the patterns are repetitively imprinted by using the mold. However, the plastic chip manufactured by the above method has a problem in view of surface modification, which is necessary for immobilizing biomaterials on a chip surface thereof. In other words, the plastic chip of the prior art immobilizes a slight amount of biomaterial on the chip surface thereof, and thus is unsuitable for use in analyzing low concentration of specimens.